Merrick blinked, unable to quite believe it. He knew if he was in Kolya’s place he would not dare Sorcha’s rage; instead he probably would have been curled up somewhere sucking his thumb like an infant in swaddling clothes.
Two months ago Sorcha had gone to the Civic Court, spoken the ritual words three times, and signed the writ before the worthies as required. The final death knell for her and Kolya’s marriage would be accepted in another full spin of the seasons. By comparison, breaking the Bond of partnership was almost impossible—at least when one of the party would not accept it.
Deacon Petav was definitely not giving up on that particular side of his relationship with Sorcha. Instead of accepting his soon to be former wife’s petition, he had gone before the Presbyterial Council and put up a strong argument for his rights. Why he had done that was still a mystery.
This was the second time he had turned up while Merrick and Sorcha were on duty. Now he stood before them like a statue wrapped in the emerald cloak of the Sensitive. Previously his wife had ignored him, but Merrick wondered if this time, after recent revelations, she would be so restrained. Deacon Chambers feared a scene—something the Order could well do without these days. As Sorcha finished her discussion with the widow, Merrick scrambled to try to prevent that possibility.
“Deacon Petav”—he dared to put a hand under his fellow Sensitive’s elbow—“we have dealt with the geist, so there is no real call for you to be here.” He thought his voice was both deferential and low.
Kolya looked down at Merrick, the only sign of any emotion being a slight hardening around his eyes. “Are you trying to hurry me along?” He might not have said the word “boy,” but it was implied. “I have the same right to be here as you.”
Merrick could feel himself beginning to bristle and remembered Sorcha’s description of why her marriage had died.
It was like struggling against a void, looking for love and affection but finding none.
He had nothing but admiration for Deacon Petav as a Sensitive, yet as a man Merrick thought he was a fool.
“But Sorcha . . . ” he hissed to Kolya.
“Sorcha is confused,” his fellow Sensitive replied mildly. “She imagines life is a fairy story. When she realizes that it’s not, she’ll come round.”
This was so contrary to what Merrick knew of his partner that he stood there for a moment, completely unable to come up with an answer.
Kolya took his silence for something it was not. “She is such a child—sneaking out of the Abbey to avoid me.”
Now Merrick could feel his awkwardness turning into anger. He was searching for words that would not communicate that when Sorcha turned.
Merrick knew her natural inclination was to rage, but even Deacon Faris realized how precarious the public’s faith in the Order was at the moment. Her brow darkened like a storm front, and her mouth opened to let something fly. Then, in a display of control, her jaw snapped shut. So as the Merchant Quarter continued on its business, she stalked away past the two Sensitives—not acknowledging either of their presences.
Unfortunately for her, Kolya was taller and easily kept pace. “You should keep me informed when you go out like this, Sorcha.” His voice remained low, and it was not tinged with anything like accusation. He said it as conversationally as if he were asking her to pass the salt.
Merrick had already been caught in the middle of several of these “discussions,” and now, as then, he felt as useful as . . .
“Tits on a bull?” Sorcha shot a grim look at him over her shoulder, before turning back to her original partner. “Can’t you see you’re not wanted here, Kolya? Be a man, and let it go.”
Her old partner shrugged. “Arch Abbot Rictun has not decided what will happen in our . . . unique position. I have primacy over Deacon Chambers, after all.”
Sorcha’s back stiffened. Rictun was an old adversary of hers—though Merrick was not certain of the reason for it. If the younger Deacon had been given a choice, he would have picked a partner without these issues, but in his own way he was just as stubborn as Kolya. The Bond and the history between Merrick and Sorcha were strong, and he would struggle for them as his partner did.
“This is not the place,” Sorcha hissed, “but I can tell you that I only wish you had fought for our marriage as you are fighting for our partnership.”
With an outraged snort, Sorcha set a cracking pace through the city and soon got them out of the Quarter. Merrick trailed behind as they climbed over the gleaming Bridge of Gilt, which as its name suggested had been gilded by a rich trader seeking favor. It was the most impressive and, Merrick thought, most ridiculous of Vermillion’s many bridges. Tall gold cupids cavorted on a series of plinths along its length, and even the oak boards under their feet were decorated with insets of brass. The broad deck was also lined with many small shops that stood cheek by jowl right up to the very end where it landed on the Imperial Island. By law there was no trade in this part of the city, but the merchants played it as close as they could. The three passed through the granite gates and into the gleaming center of the Empire, walking briskly past the homes of the aristocracy, up the hill toward the Mother Abbey. Only the Imperial Palace stood higher on the man-made mount in the middle of the lagoon. Merrick’s wide-eyed view of the beauty of the place had changed—he now knew that not everything was as it seemed. He loved the Order, believed in the good work it did, but Arch Abbot Hastler’s failed attempt to bring the Murashev into the world had revealed a hidden side to it that he had never imagined.
As he contemplated that, Merrick had been left behind by Sorcha and Kolya, who were striding along at great speed. Deacon Petav’s soft voice was hard to make out over the rumble of carriages passing them—Sorcha’s was not.
“—don’t try to sell me that, Kolya! I know the Otherside ebbs and flows, but this is
not
part of that natural cycle. And if Hastler—” Sorcha stopped, catching herself using the dead Arch Abbot’s name rather than that of his successor. She growled in irritation and walked even faster up the hill.
Kolya shrugged at Merrick as if they were part of some club of Sensitives confused by Sorcha. The older Deacon cultivated an aura of passive acceptance, but Merrick knew he could turn that around suddenly, making it seem as though it was the other person in the wrong. It was quite a talent.
Luckily they reached the Abbey, and never had he been so grateful to see the high, white walls that surrounded it. They went in the postern gate, past the lay Brother guards, and into the courtyard. To the right: the infirmary, the gardens, and the stables. To the left: the dormitory, the refectory, and the novitiate house. Ahead were the lines of cloisters with Deacons strolling through them, talking or just quietly contemplating.
As Sorcha lowered her head and made her way there, Deacon Petav stopped and called her name. She completely ignored him, pulled her cloak around her shoulders and stalked off. Now it was Kolya who caught at Merrick’s arm. “She has to talk to me!” He appeared genuinely bemused by his nearly former wife.
The other Sensitive stopped and stared at him. “You must know she is resolute in her decision, Deacon Petav, so tell me, why do you persist?”
His tall form bent then, just a fraction. “This is all that remains.” He spoke the words quietly before walking away toward the dormitory. Merrick watched him, wondering at the man who had let Sorcha go without complaint yet now regretted it so bitterly.
However, Deacon Petev had made his own bed—his inaction had consequences that he must now deal with. Merrick turned and ran to catch up with Sorcha, who he suddenly realized was making her way through the cloisters ditly toward the receiving chambers of the Arch Abbot. Going toe-to-toe with Rictun was in no one’s best interests. Merrick called her name. It echoed in the ceiling of the cloisters, and several of their fellow Deacons glanced up. Surprisingly, she did stop.
“Not there—please, Sorcha!” He didn’t care who heard, because they were already the talk of the Abbey.
Their eyes locked, and it was she who flinched. Her hands clenched the edge of her cloak. Instead, she stalked into the Devotional. Before the arrival of the geists this had been a church—a place to worship the gods. Now it hosted gatherings, meetings and training to fight the unliving. Still, as they entered the heart of the Abbey, the great soaring ceiling, the beautiful stained glass windows, even the statues of the Deacons of the Old Order stirred Merrick’s heart. He loved the services they had here, the words of wisdom passed on by others of the Order, stories of the past—all those things. It gave him peace, and he hoped it did the same for his partner.
It was a sign of Sorcha’s bewilderment that she let herself be hauled into one of the chapels that ran the length of the great vaulted space that was the Devotional. Merrick could read her confusion in the tight line of her jaw and the way she would not meet his eyes.
“I saw him die.” She whispered, so that the vast space would not catch her words. Sorcha looked up at him then, her blue eyes uncertain—frightened, perhaps, of her partner’s response.
“I saw it too!” Merrick touched her shoulder, and for a second she did not move.
Then, sliding away from his touch, she leaned against the gray stone wall and looked through the stained glass window at the lay Brothers. Out in the garden they were bustling to harvest late-summer crops. “But I suppose you think it means nothing?”
“Actually”—Merrick leaned on the wall opposite and tucked his hands inside his cloak—“I believe it would be foolish to ignore this message.”
She looked at him askance. “It was Nynnia who delivered it.”
Merrick shook his head, terrified and hopeful. “I don’t know if that is even possible—we still don’t understand what she was.”
“But what if it is true?” Sorcha returned. “What if Nynnia is on the Otherside, and she wants us to stop Raed’s murder?”
Outside, the bells began to ring, summoning the Initiates to their classes. Merrick had very recently been among their number, and yet now he was preparing to go against all those years of training. Again. Still, he too was bound to Raed and knew him for a good man.
So, pushing off from the wall, he smiled at his partner. “Then let us do just that.”
The brightness of Sorcha’s smile could have melted winter ice.
Merrick held up his hand. “On one condition—we do not go haring off without preparing properly.”
Sorcha’s lips twitched, but she sketched a bow in front of him. “Whatever you say, my lord Chambers.”
That one gesture brought up long-forgotten memories, which he struggled to stuff down. With a cough he turned away. “Let’s adjourn to my cell and see if we can find out what that message of yours really meant.”
The dormitory was quiet at this time of day, with most Deacons being on duty, but a few retired to their cells to study or mediate with the talisears of trof their art. Sorcha had moved from a large cell shared with Deacon Petav to a smaller one next to Merrick’s. It was a significant sign that he knew had caused the birth of many rumors.
Despite being serious people dedicated to protecting the world, Deacons were just as prone to foibles as the rest of humanity, and gossip could be as rampant in the dormitory as at any boarding school. Though Merrick had gotten over his fear of his partner, he was not going to reach out to her in that intimate way. They already had enough complications in their lives.
His cell was just like every other one in the dormitory: whitewashed, narrow, containing a bed and a set of camphor wood drawers. A Deacon was only supposed to have enough possessions that could be carried in saddlebags—a throwback to their history of wandering the land serving the people. It was all very different from his childhood as a young aristocrat.
Merrick rolled the meditation rug out on the floor. It was a fine piece of tapestry with the Ten Runes of Dominion and the Seven Runes of Sight on it. It was woven by the lay Brothers with fine Frigyian wool and was the only splash of color to be found in the room. The runes themselves, unlike cantrips, held no particular power—only when carved on the Gauntlets or Strop by a Deacon were they given potency—but they did serve the purpose to concentrate a Deacon’s mind. In the days before the Break of the Otherside, the ancient days when the Order had been a religious one, it would have been called a prayer rug.
Sorcha knelt on it, her fingertips brushing the Runes of Dominion, while Merrick took up a mirror place next to those of Sight. He did not need to work hard to find the rune Sielu, the First. Activating this old friend did not require the Strop over his eyes.
“Think of the spectyr,” he said in a soft undertone. “Think of what it showed you.”
Sorcha sighed, sounding exasperated, as if she would rather be running to the stable for their horses. The Bond suggested that was exactly her immediate instincts.
“Sorcha,” Merrick snapped, closing his eyes, “concentrate!”
Sinking back on her heels, he was surprised when she didn’t reply. Against his eyes the images she had been fed by the spectyr danced. They were quick, like a flicker of cards in the hands of a master player.
Merrick invoked the rune: capturing the images, holding them, and then seamlessly playing them back through the Bond. Sorcha hissed over her teeth, and that was the only admission of admiration his partner would give.